


"And palm to palm is holy palmer's kiss"

by Dustbunnygirl



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-12
Updated: 2008-03-12
Packaged: 2018-08-14 08:28:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8005732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dustbunnygirl/pseuds/Dustbunnygirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Sometimes you think these will be the hands that break you.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	"And palm to palm is holy palmer's kiss"

**Author's Note:**

> **Title:** "And palm to palm is holy palmer's kiss", 1 of 10  
>  **Prompt:** rough hands, ["the 10s" challenge.](http://community.livejournal.com/under_the_couch/2380.html)  
>  **Fandom:** Torchwood  
>  **Pairing:** Jack/Ianto  
>  **Rating:** Maybe a very light R for implied shagging  
>  **Word count:** 865  
>  **Warnings:** Slight, infintesimal spoilers for Cyberwoman. If you dislike second-person fic, you might want to turn away now.  
>  **Disclaimer:** I own nothing. I’ve borrowed my toys from Auntie Beeb and Uncle Rusty’s toy box and fully plan on eventually giving them back someday, when I’m tired of them.  
> 

When your mind wanders, perched as it is over expense reports or mindless filing or doctored press releases you've written a hundred times, its his hands you remember. Even now, hours after he left your bed, you can call up ghost touches - blunt nails scratching at your scalp, the firm pressure of his grip at your nape - and feel them as surely as if he's standing behind you. A waft of air from the vent overhead teases across your cheek and its his knuckles in gentle caress. It only takes a single, insignificant nudge to lead your thoughts away from the mundane office or the papers on your desk. One little reminder, and you're lost.

It's so easy to narrow your world to those two hands - hands that sometimes feel like they're everywhere at once, that can soothe or brutalize in equally delicious ways. The long fingers are gentle when they cup your cheek, tilt your lips up to receive a brief and feather-light kiss; almost cruel when they dig into your hips to pull you flush against him or steady you as he sinks in to the hilt. They can be warm and tender when they reach for yours in the quiet darkness of the Hub late at night and then rip the shirt from you a moment later, scattering buttons across the floor. You never tell him how much it thrills you when you hear the little plastic discs clatter against the floor like wicked, wanton rain. To do so would put a chink in the staid, stoic, buttoned-up Ianto he thinks he knows so well. And there has to be a little mystery - he could get bored of you too easily otherwise.

His were the first hands you wanted to worship. You've mapped every joint and callous and long faded scar with lips and fingers and tongue; traced his lifeline with your thumb as he dozes and wondered how it could be so short when he's lived so long. There are mornings he has woken - on the rare occasion he sleeps - to you caressing his fingers with tender reverence, as if each digit were an idol worthy of veneration. Each kiss left on his knuckles, on the pads of his fingers, is a silent, wordless prayer. In the moments after, the ones spent trying to catch your breath and your sanity and fall back to the world, you think you would gladly turn your back on religion and deify these sinner's hands and put all your faith into their cupped palms.

You scrawl "I love you," across his palm and hope someday it sinks through the skin.

Sometimes you think these will be the hands that break you. That you'll wake up from this hazy dream and find his Webley at your head again, smell the gunpowder and oil on his fingers and taste the bitter flavor of his disgust on the air. You've stared down the barrel of that gun before, saw the intent in his eyes and felt with surety you deserved the bullet waiting at the end of the chamber. You've waited for death, seen it poised in his curled finger around the trigger, and felt the cold relief when it didn't come. You know the strength in those hands, the power restrained when he wraps his hand around your throat with only the gentlest, briefest pressure. How easy it would be for that restraint to snap with the right provocation.

But he has so many ways he could shatter you, ways where he doesn't have to touch you at all. Every time he reaches to touch Gwen's shoulder, to smooth a hand over her hair or press the warmth of his fingers against the small of her back, a few more pieces of you break away. He could tell you a hundred times how innocent those touches are, how little they mean, but you remember what each of the same feels like to you and you can't bring yourself to believe him. Instead, you tell yourself you can take what he can spare to give you, that you can be happy with teasing gropes when the others aren't looking, frantic and fumbling caresses in dark corners when the office is empty. You lie to yourself that this is enough, like you've lied to yourself about so much in the past, because it has to be enough. Because without this, there's nothing at all and you'd rather have a piece of him than none of him.

The door opens; you track him by the echo of his footsteps across the floor. He doesn't speak - doesn't need to, not when the hand resting on your shoulder says so much for him instead. You wonder, as fingers stroke idly through your suit coat and shirt, if he has the first clue what his hands tell you or if you've been reading them wrong all along. When warm, rough fingers brush your neck just above your collar as they reach to loosen your tie, you think that, for now, it doesn't really matter one way or another. Because this is enough.

It has to be. 

_*title taken from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. Yes, he's probably rolling in his grave right now._


End file.
